Friday, August 3, 2012

Bill Black steals my use of "Schadenfreude" to illustrate the right-wing plutocrats' fixation with austerity. Good job, just a week late dude. But I can understand; after all, you had to pad it out to 2500 words. All I had time for was a quick comment while at work.

Apparently, Gross is now so arrogant that he feels he can disregard Econ 101. If so, let's just ignore him from now on because his commentary is no longer worth anything.

Der Spargel finds a German of Spanish heritage willing to slag off his own people's country for a quarter of the article before actually pointing out how much the Spaniards are getting fucked.

Typical German thinking: he blames Spaniards' problems on the old German bugaboo of "wanting something for nothing", and forgets to mention that most of their nation's debt comes from bailing out a bunch of banks that made stupid lending mistakes. Individual Spaniards, btw, have no recourse to bankruptcy - they become indentured debt-slaves. But Germans like that, because it means the swarthy Mediterraneans get punished for taking loans - one of the greatest sins a German can ever commit.

No, seriously. Germans don't take out loans. Only 1/3 of Germans have a credit card, and those who do pay their balance each month instead of paying interest. Why? Why do Germans consider it evil to pay interest on a loan? Well, it's related to how some German newspaper gave a foreign politician a Prussian helmet to encourage them to "go all Prussian on your swarthy taxpayers' asses". Hint: Germans don't fucking understand symbolism. Another hint:

Fuck, now I know how Ulrike Meinhof felt. And I'm not even getting any secret funding from Moscow via the Stasi.

And another der Spargel article: Slovenia needs a bailout. For their country? No, they've pushed through austerity policies like good little boys. They need a bailout for - wait for it - their banks.

Seriously? You fucking shitting me? People are still going along with this? "Yes, we taxpayers will gladly pay a 12% coupon for decades so that these bankers can get bailed out for the stupid loans that fueled a property bubble that began when the Teutonic master race signed us up to join the Eurozone."

What's more, the Germans will then criticize them for taking out loans.

When the only reason their fucking housing skyrocketed in price was because all the fucking Germans and Dutch and Belgians swooped in and bought up their houses the minute they found out Slovenia would join the Eurozone.

But I guess they wanted the Slovenians to live in fucking cardboard boxes.

If you're pessimistic on Europe, then what the article really looks like is a bunch of analysts second-guessing the entire Draghi topic in an attempt to try to convince themselves to buy when everyone yesterday was all about the selling cos OMG iz teh doooomz.

Okay. Now erase all the content. Erase all the Draghi & Euro related stuff from the narrative.

What you're left with, after erasing the specific content, is a bunch of people trying real hard to convince themselves to buy the market.

When will the massive hedge funds and giant investment banks stop this stupid amateurish knee-jerk buying and selling? Are they really as stupid as the retail morons on the Venture?

(I mean really! Is the Spain 10Y yield never going to go under 7% again? Oh, wait... it did. Just today.)

Who knows... maybe the pointlessness of this extreme day-to-day volatility, this stupid attempt to constantly change position based on the policy pronouncement du jour, is a vindication of the assertion that there's far too much money in the system.

Or maybe we should have all the hedgefunders and investment bankers rounded up and shot or something. Or at least have them fired, since obviously they don't know how to make money.

I suddenly decided that it would be a good idea to read up on BCM to help myself sleep at night, since I've really waded in to buy with both fists as the price collapsed. And, after all, while a certain analyst calls BCM a slam-dunk, worth something over $5 on the strength of Corani alone, after dilution to build, even at $25 silver, you never want to put all your trust in an analyst no matter who.

And yeah he's had great calls too (like FRG or AMM or PGM or VEN), but also bad ones, and how do you know which is which til they've played out?

And when you see a stock drift down stupidly and insistently, and you've spent a few years on the Venture, you start to worry that (A) bad news is on the horizon and people with inside info are selling, or (B) a financing is imminent so the "accredited shareholders" are dumping into thin bids. Or (C) generally evil is afoot.

Anyway. So I spent 5 minutes checking their end 2011 MD&A, and saw that they had $90M cash. Maybe $80M by today. So, no financing problem. Market cap at this second is $212M. So, EV is $132M, and for that I own what BMO labels as the 5th biggest silver mine that you'll see starting up in the next few years, at 25 cents per silver equivalent ounce. Valuing Santa Ana at $0. And their other little exploration properties at $0, which is probably okay since they don't matter.

So, why BCM go down sahib? Maybe cos Yanacocha's the only thing in the news in Peru right now? I dunno. Or maybe the Corani ESIA was supposed to have been submitted in July, and god knows if I can't find record of that being accomplished on SEDAR?

Or maybe it's just going down because other stocks have gone down, and there's probably still some bozos holding BCM that they bought at $10, and so they figure why not dump into nonexistent bids. Cos after all, it's not like this is the NYSE and bidcrashing is punished.

As a result, they've served up a "fat pitch" to the Democrats, who have managed to overcome their typical electioneering incompetence to hit this one out of the park; they've made "The Republicans' war on women" a central campaign topic (at least among women, cos after all the men in the media don't give a fuck).

Thank Lord Baby-Eating Satan that the Rethuglicans haven't yet succeeded in eliminating women's right to vote... yet. And thank Lord Baby-Eating Satan that the Nazi Rethuglican fucks are too fucking stupid to realize that 50% of the American population are women.

Seriously, as a party, if you're that fucking buttfuck stupid, so fucking buttfuck stupid that you essentially offer to enslave half the nation's population, then you do not deserve to have a single candidate elected. No. Not one. Not even a relatively harmless one like Top-Gun McCain.

It's bullshit like this that keeps people out of the market. Frankly I think it's about time we take a page out of China's book and start having all staff at these fucking companies executed. All the staff.

And BofA says "the indicator implies a 12-month price target of 1808 on the index, har har but seriously folks".

I personally doubt you can get there without heavily inflating. And the downside risks are large-ish right now: if nothing else, the plutocracy will try to find more ways to destroy the market by introducing yet more inefficiencies of crime and broken trust than they have so far.

But even still, extreme bearishness on stocks? After the SPY chart's done what it's done so far? Neat-o.

Here's a world map from their site with pretty colours to make it easier for you:

Important to note, resource economies and China-dependent economies have gone down a bit. US-dependent and oil-dependent economies have done rather well.

That gives fuel to the idea that, compared to the rest of the world, the US economy is doing fine-ish.

But the worst to go down isn't the Chinazone.

It's Europe.

That tells you what the real lynch-pin is in this coming possible worldwide recession. It's not China and their inscrutable, fraudulent, paper-tiger economy; they're down a bit, but US strength is well compensating.

The real lynch-pin is Germany's obstruction of any European solution.Germans really would cut off their own noses to spite their faces, because frankly spiting people (even themselves) is part of German psychology.

Perhaps we'll be seeing Obama, Wen, Singh and a few Saudi princes phoning up these self-important cunts Weidmann and Merkel, to give them a good tongue-lashing for Germany's outright sabotage of the world economy? Perhaps they could even offer to kick Germany out of the G8 - after all, practicing economic sabotage on a worldwide scale just because you're a hateful, spiteful race with anti-democratic imperial plans probably should put you on an international-relations level with Iran.

By the way, if you want some real fun, go over to der Spargel's English-language site and read some articles in the German press about how all southern Europeans are corrupt, swarthy Untermenschen who need the glorious Fourth Reich to march in and govern their countries for them.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

I've been starting to read Sober Look, which up til now has looked like a very good blog free of bullshit and media hype. In fact, their quality output has been part of my inspiration to strongly cut back on the number of bullshit blogs that I've been following.

The food inflation data they provide is minor and unconvincing so far. Unfortunately, they seem to have been taken by food inflation opinion, which I think is coloured by the fact that the insignificant hedge-fund losers and anal ysts being interviewed (note: no data, just interviews about opinions) are all saturated with the media hype over the US midwest dustbowl.

Yeah, sure, US is a major supplier of world grains.

But so is Canada, you dumb fucks. In fact, we were the foodbasket of the Soviet Union. No, really.

So, what about my caveat of "so far", above? Will food inflation explode in the coming months?

Well, here's a chart of the Teucrium Corn ETF:

Would you buy this today?

With all the media hype over the past 2 weeks, about the worldwide drought and all, the chart seems to have stopped going anywhere.

If you wanted gold and silver during their bubble tops last year, you might not think this chart is a buy. In fact, perhaps it's a sell. Perhaps the market is over-long corn now.

Now, here's something really funny:

Yup, that's the CORN weekly. Two Three things:

1. Hey, $50 seems the magic number, no? (Caveat: I dunno if there's contango loss built into this ETF. Hope the error that would cause isn't too great.)
2. Hey, see that big surge in volume that took it to $50? Hm... seems like the volume peaked there, eh?
3. Hey, the world didn't starve to death last year, eh?

Now, there are still scary stories out there. E.g. from India. TwoThree Among the various responses to them are such points as:

1. Indians are chronic worriers.
2. Rainfall's sitting at 80% of normal right now - not a drought at all.
3. 80% norm rainfall will probably give you 90-95% norm of output. No big loss there. Certainly swamped by supply chain inefficiency.
4. India's agribusiness varies by region anyway.
5. So does rainfall. Big darn country, you should see it. I suggest for starters the movie Gandhi.
6. That bit about chicken feed prices going up? Yeah, well, India has inflation more generally, due to their government being idiots and the rupee collapsing in value.

Sober look generally has been a good new blog on my reading list, but now unfortunately I will have to continually remind myself that they aren't immune to the idiotic media hype either.

And apparently Humala said offhandedly in his speech last week that he thinks the idea would be nice, in the abstract sense at least, to put the right to water in the Constitution. No actionable news there.

So, I dunno. Maybe CIBC just came out with a promotional writeup for BCM, and that's why we see the volume up? The buying was all in large blocks, not in icebergs.

FP had a decent-sized article a while back on Barkerville's optimistic 43-101 prediction of "approximately eleventy-bleven gazillion tons of gold" at their whatever-you-call-it project in BC or wherever.

Sorry, I just found it today. Frankly I don't care about BGM, except that Otto's off on vacation this week so I figure I could provide some substitute snark for you.

Here's a quote from the article:

"Barkerville has turned the spotlight on the independent geologists who are hired by miners to analyze drilling results and confirm the metal content of their deposits. These individuals, called Questionable Qualified Persons or QPs, have little to no contact with investors, but have an enormous impact on whether mining projects get developed and how they are perceived in the market. They also have a lot of leeway in how they fudge interpret data, which can sometimes lead to projections that are far too enthusiastic or — less often — too cautious."

and:

"If QPs do make mistakes, they are referred to their professional associations. Class-action lawyers are also on the prowl for miners that report numbers way out of line. Put together, these factors have accomplished fuck all keep the system functioning reasonably well."

So yes, apparently there is a professional association for geologists - though god only knows what it takes to get decertified!

The stupid part is, he says "my favorite short of the next decade is the U.S. bond market". Then he says "I am long ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury [TBT], which is the inverse, double-short bond ETF".

Even if bonds do go down in the next decade, putting your money in TBT as a long-term strategy can lose you 90% before you ever make your money back! Did this guy not read the memo on not using leveraged ETFs as a long-term strategy, back when it got sent out to the entire fucking investing world?

The article's lead calls Kass "the legendary investor who famously predicted that stocks would bottom in March 2009". Ooh, ahh. So that's who he is. So therefore I'm supposed to believe that this guy will luck out on his next call too? Even so, suggesting I buy TBT at this yield, in this environment, is stupid. Even if it turns out right, it's utterly stupid risk. You need an avalanche collapse in Treasuries, in the next couple months, for a TBT call to work out in your favour.